Premier League owners need to put supporters before profit or risk breaking
their loyalty for good

The clue is in the name. Each of the 20 teams in the Premier League are clubs – from Manchester United Football Club to Athletic Football Club Bournemouth (AFC Bournemouth). Yes, they can be plcs or private limited companies or whatever ownership structure they want to adopt but they are all clubs. And they should never, ever forget that.

A club is an organisation, set up by a group of people with a common purpose, constituted, for example, to play a sport, in this case the most popular sport of them all, football. Their reason for being is as institutions, part of the fabric of their communities. They are not investments.

Fans have lost patience with the exorbitant costs of tickets at Anfield

They need to be run on business models, but they are not simple businesses. They do not make widgets or chocolate bars. They are fundamentally not about profit and loss; in fact the ideal scenario would be for them, and all football clubs, to have been legally enshrined as not-for-profit organisations. But that game is lost. The most important bottom line for a football club should always be the points total not the cash.

There is no fan element written into their ownership structures as in other countries, such as with most German clubs, so foreign owners were always going to migrate to England. It was always easier for Roman Abramovich to acquire Chelsea than it would have been Bayern Munich; for the Glazer family to buy Manchester United rather than Barcelona. English football is less complicated; less accountable to fans – and therefore more malleable.

The Grim Reaper at Anfield

It means market forces will always prevail unless there is some sense of responsibility that the clubs either assume collectively or because supporters compel them. And clearly the most immediate area of attack is ticket prices.

The Football Supporters’ Federation rightly wants clubs to fund price cuts and it senses the gathering momentum. A meeting of fans groups is being planned for next week and a course of coordinated action will be discussed. The clubs should, finally, beware. Those prices need to be not just frozen but driven down. It is not about supply and demand, about stadium occupancy or about market forces. It is simply about doing the right thing. About behaving like a club should and redistributing some of the wealth and looking after the people who make it what it is. The only sweat at a football club should be from the brow of a player not from the asset.

In the past week there has been hope that a tipping point may be reached; maybe not now but soon unless it is smothered and stifled in the PR gloss that football is so adept at creating.

Empty seats at Anfield

But in the week that the Premier League clubs were formally told that the new television rights deal for next season would collectively be worth £8.3 billion over three years, they rejected a simple gesture: a £30 cap for away fans. Not all clubs rejected it. But seven or eight did and, given 14 of the 20 need to say yes, then the plan was not passed. It was a PR own goal.

In the same week Arsenal were forced to backtrack on charging season ticket holders up to £30 extra to attend their Champions League home tie against Barcelona following an outcry from fans who already pay some of the highest prices in the country.

A review is now being considered; a backtrack is inevitable. Otherwise this protest will grow. There will be further walkouts. Every club is special to its community but this felt more profound because it was at Anfield, because this was Liverpool, because of the numbers who participated and the resonance of their club. Such an action is not good for the Premier League or the broadcasters paying so much to beam it around the world.

The disconnect between the clubs and their supporters has grown dangerously and what is so astonishing about all of this is that it is so easily remedied. The clubs are awash with cash. They can do so much now to reduce the cost to their supporters, give more back. Ticket revenue has become a less vital part of their income streams and the rules of financial fair play have eased.

Last week Arsène Wenger argued that the new TV revenue had to be used to buy players rather than cut ticket prices. “I believe the pressure on spending the money will become bigger and you cannot necessarily distribute the money to other people,” he said while predicting the era of the £100 million player will soon be “easy to reach”.

Arsène Wenger says new TV revenue has to be used to buy players rather than cut ticket prices

Wenger is right. Except it does not have to be that way; which he also knows. The money in the Premier League has made clubs lazy with regard to recruitment. Ask any club around Europe and they are amazed at the prices Premier League clubs are prepared to pay for players; the money they waste. Wenger’s argument is undercut by one other thing this season: Leicester City are top of the league having spent a fraction of the big clubs' investment. It is not just about the money.

Hopefully this swell of opposition will not go away. Not now. There is a growing momentum which means that, when clubs reconvene next month for their next shareholders meeting, they will have to do something. Even then it will only be a start. Hopefully, a tipping point is close to being reached. They are football clubs. Not football businesses. They should remember what they are supposed to stand for.

Drinkwater could sparkle for England

The word is there are unlikely to be any new names when the 40 or so England players meet at St George’s Park this Thursday as Roy Hodgson’s preparations for Euro 2016 begin. Why so? It would be a travesty if Leicester City’s Danny Drinkwater is not involved, not least because the England squad is crying out for a midfielder just like him.

Jack Wilshere will be there, as will Michael Carrick. But can either be relied on this summer given their injury records?

City's Joe Hart saves from Leicester's Danny Drinkwater

Drinkwater is 25, fit and injury-‑free, in the form of life and playing at the heart of the Premier League’s best team this season. Drinkwater gets around the pitch, is strong in the tackle, disciplined and can pick a pass.

Hodgson has been proved right with many of his new picks of late – Jamie Vardy, Eric Dier and, above all, Dele Alli – and Drinkwater is crying out to be the next one.